2/28/2005 @ 12:00AM

Fact and Comment

Deadly Prejudice

Nearly every month almost as many people die from malaria as were killed by the tsunami waves in the Indian Ocean. Most of malaria’s victims, some 2 million a year, are children under the age of 5. More than 300 million annually suffer from this debilitating disease that drains survivors of their mental and physical energies. Incredibly, there’s an easy, proven and cheap way to eradicate most of the globe’s malaria-DDT. Yet in one of history’s more murderously myopic ongoing actions, most advanced countries and international agencies discourage its use. Why? Blame Rachel Carson’s seismically influential-and now largely discredited-book, Silent Spring, first published in 1962. In it she blames DDT for imperiling birds and people, portraying it as a blight of almost biblical proportions. It ain’t so. As Dr. Elizabeth Whelan of the American Council on Science & Health once put it, there “has never been a documented case of human illness or death in the U.S. as a result of the standard and accepted use of pesticides.” The British medical journal The Lancet similarly notes that after 40 years of research no significant health threat from DDT has been found.

Indiscriminate use of DDT will indeed have a deleterious impact on certain birds. But we’re not advocating that. The use of tiny amounts inside a house or hut is all that’s needed. As Nicholas Kristof observed in one of his New York Times columns, “Four hundred fifty thousand people can be protected [from malaria] with the same amount [of DDT] that was applied in the 1960s to a single 1,000-acre American cotton farm…. Humans are far better off exposed to DDT than exposed to malaria.”

Yet Carson’s book has made DDT taboo-with ghastly results. Some 30 million to 60 million people have perished unnecessarily. In 1996, for example, South Africa stopped using DDT, and its malaria cases increased tenfold. Four years later South Africa reversed itself and employed DDT again. The result: The incidence of malaria promptly dropped almost 80%. Nevertheless, too many health officials cling to alternatives that are only fractionally as effective. That various agencies, governments, health officials and environmentalists have deliberately dissuaded the world from using DDT is one of the most immoral moves of modern times.

Soviet-Style Pricing

California has a new law on its books requiring hospitals to disclose prices for goods and services. One immediate, eye-opening result is being able to see the Grand Canyon-esque gaps in what hospitals charge for similar treatments and medications. A head/brain CT scan, for instance, can range in price from a little less than $900 to as much as $6,600. In short, the hospitals’ pricing seems to have little to do with supply and demand and no real rationale.

At some of these institutions consumers must make special appointments in order to see the hospital’s price list. Can you imagine, say, a hotel not letting you know how much a room costs?

This just further demonstrates the need in the U.S. for promoting the new Health Savings Accounts. HSAs are like IRAs-the money goes in tax-free, grows tax-free and can be spent for health care purposes tax-free. HSAs enable companies to buy high-deductible health care insurance policies at low prices, and most of the deductible is covered by the contributions to the HSAs. These accounts are owned by the individual employees, so if you lose your job, you take the HSA with you. The money is yours.

We’ve used a variation of HSAs here at Forbes for a number of years. Each year our employees get $2,000 to use for medical expenses. What they don’t use gets rolled over. If your medical outlays exceed $2,000, then-and only then-the deductible kicks in. Go above the deductible and the plan’s catastrophic insurance comes into play. We’re now also offering HSAs themselves-they have the advantage of being easily, fully portable. Bottom line: Our health care costs have gone up less than those of our peers. Individual workers search out better values for the health care money that belongs to them.

Injecting consumerism into health care would give us the best of all worlds: more health care for less money. The most vivid example is laser eye surgery. Today the procedure that enables people to do away with glasses costs about a third of what it did a decade ago. Why? Because it’s not covered by insurance; therefore, those performing the laser surgery have every incentive to make the procedure better and more affordable. HSAs will have the same effect: You, the consumer (i.e., the patient), will get full value for your health care dollars precisely because they are your dollars.

Band of Buyers

Instead of bellyaching over the increase in the number of people who don’t have health insurance, Congress should immediately pass the Small Business Health Fairness Act. This piece of legislation would make insurance affordable for as many as 8.5 million people by allowing small businesses to band together through trade and professional associations to purchase health insurance for their employees. Currently these outfits must buy policies on their own, often at prohibitively high prices. These businesses lack the buying clout of big companies, and they fall under state regulations whose mandated benefits enormously increase insurance costs.

With so-called Association Health Plans (AHPs), small businesses would gain the bargaining power of large corporations and, in being put under federal jurisdiction, would avoid costly state mandates, just as big companies do today. Fewer small businesses would be forced out of the health care market altogether.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that AHPs would cut small business insurance premiums 13% on average, and in some cases, up to 25%. The bill passed the House last year but was stalled in the Senate. The White House and congressional leaders should push enactment of this bill as soon as possible.

Congress should also permit individuals and companies to buy health insurance through the Internet. Buyers could then choose from policies around the country. Thus a person in New Jersey could purchase a policy issued by a company in Oklahoma, thereby avoiding the costly, onerous regulations that make health insurance in New Jersey so unnecessarily expensive-and unaffordable.

True Titan

Walter B. Wriston, former chairman and CEO of Citi-corp/Citibank, was a founding director of Forbes.com, serving until last year. Our dot-com revenues would never have equaled those that Citicorp took in every few minutes, but to Walt that mattered not at all.

He was, at heart, an innovator, an entrepreneur, an original thinker and a man who delighted in getting things done. He quickly grasped the promise of the Internet and never lost faith in its possibilities, even in the aftermath of the high-tech bubble. The fact that there were setbacks and excesses in the field was to him part of the normal course of events in a free market. That never made Walt lose sight of how powerful an instrument the Internet is. He understood, as few do, how fundamentally vital is the spread of information.

The willingness to pioneer by pursuing and investing in new technologies and venturing into areas where others feared to tread-or had tread and faltered-was how this man truly revolutionized American and global banking. The word “revolution” has been grossly overused, but what Wriston did for finance was just that–a revolution.

Until the 1960s banking had been a backwater. A handful of hours each day was more than sufficient to handle one’s responsibilities. Commercial bankers were risk averse, stodgy. They didn’t want to be bothered with consumers-that was for savings banks, not commercial banks. And the government told banks what interest rates they were allowed to pay on deposits.

Before Walt was through, however, he had almost singlehandedly turned banking from the equivalent of a small, sleepy town into a hyperenergetic New York-like metropolis. Under his leadership Citibank pioneered automated teller machines. It pursued the credit card business in a way that no other bank was doing at the time. He constantly battered government regulations. He expanded internationally at a dizzying pace. Old constraints on banks were consigned to the dustbin of history. Walt made what is now known as Citigroup the world’s leading financial institution. Because he was not risk averse, Walt made his share of mistakes. But these were minute compared with his monumental achievements.

Walt was a delight to be around. He believed passionately in free markets. His insights were almost always original and profound, and our board meetings were always productive and stimulating.

My only regret is that he was never given the reins to run the Treasury Department or the Federal Reserve. Now that would have been something to behold! Ultimately, however, Walt Wriston achieved far, far more than those who have held these kinds of public-sector posts. We have lost a truly remarkable man.

Reviews of noted New York City restaurants by various FORBES eatery experts.

Lure Fishbar–142 Mercer St., near Prince St. (Tel.: 212-431-7676). The yachtlike ambience immediately beguiles. The fare is uniformly delicious: first-rate sashimi platter; flavorful clam chowder; tender, tasty chicken skewers; and moist and fabulous swordfish. All are served by a staff who clearly like their jobs.

Ben Benson’s–123 West 52nd St. (Tel.: 212-581-8888). An old-fashioned steak house in the grand tradition. It’s crowded, but the crowd is very happy. Steaks are right up there with the best; the lobster and shrimp dishes are generous and delicious. The baked potatoes are enormous and done to perfection, and the tomato and onion salad with Roquefort dressing is obscenely good.

Coco Pazzo–23 East 74th St. (Tel.: 212-794-0205). This spot has finally come into its own. The welcome is warm; the food, mouthwateringly good. Favorites: scrumptious white asparagus with Parmesan sauce, tender Italian pot roast and superb broccoli rabe. Desserts are simple and good.